User:Poelstra/What is a target audience

Issue

"What is a target audience? Is it a concrete persona? Is it an abstract paragraph or two on a wiki?"

Background

For the past year there has have been wide ranging discussions on better defining the purpose and goals of the Fedora Project and the Fedora Distribution. Two aspects of these discussions have been been who the Fedora Project is for and who the Fedora Distribution is for. The term target audience has been used to characterize this identification.

Proposed Solutions

Diagram of the user base for Fedora, which reflects the audience we want to reach with the distribution, and encourage them to get involved.

• Re-characterize the term Target Audience to User Base. This better reflects the board's decision around this topic in October 2009 which has often been overlooked in this disucussion:
  • User Base
• Our User Base or base user is a user that has the minimum level of skills, knowledge and interest as described at the User Base page.
• We want a default offering that meets the needs of these users at a minimum.
• The graphic to the right attempts to illustrate this concept.
  • The pyramid used here looks and behaves like other accepted models of communities of practice
  • There is a much smaller number of core contributors near the tip of the pyramid, and much larger number of users toward the base with the potential to get involved
  • There is a smooth spectrum of skill and involvement from our minimum base user to a core contributor, shown by the gradient -- as opposed to a strict set of gates or levels
  • Users can become more active in the community through involvement and experience
  • There is a line below which we don't target certain kinds of users, such as inexperienced computer users
• 2010-03-18 board meeting discussed proposed diagrams
• 2010-03-29 SWG meeting discussed a little more and Paul is drafting a new diagram

Risk/Benefit Analysis

• Not sure if this even applies to this topic.